Featured Adoptees

Sweet playful kitten, 4 mos old, adorable!
Bernard is a doll! He is young, sweet and so so playful! Bernard is about 3 or 4 mos old, neutered, chipped and vaccinated. Bernard is deaf, like many white/blue eyed pets. He is otherwise healthy and happy. Adoption fee is $125.

Featured Article

As an animal welfare organization, we have chosen to put a major focus on the importance of spay/neuter as a means for controlling the rampant animal overpopulation which leads the euthanization of thousands of animals each year. Our initial foray into this area has been the build-out of our mobile

Colorado Animal Welfare League SNOWmobile performed our 5000th surgery! A lovely female Shepard mix name Calypso was the happy &willing number 5000 spay at our recent clinic in Rocky Ford, Colorado. Since beginning our spay neuter program we have been able to help multiple rural Colorado areas with publicly owned spays & neuters, vaccinations, and education about their pets. And now, we get to get excited about #5,000 and look forward to helping so many more.

For the last 4 years the Maldonado family has volunteered with CAWL fostering dogs, cats, puppies and kittens. This family has never turned away an animal in need, they are incredibly caring and compassionate. Dozens of lucky animals have spent time in their home and with their amazing daughter, Katie.

Today was really special as Katie was surprised and honored by a local optometrist, Dr. Michael Vaske, of Vaske Vision Care. Dr. Vakse offered an iPad mini for the winner of his good deed contest and the best volunteer in Parker, Colorado. Many essays about good deeds came in but the choice was Katie! She single handedly saved more than a dozen kittens in one summer vacation! Katie loves to care for and socialize the dogs and cats and also loves dance and horses. She is an excellent student and all around amazing young lady.

The Maldado family runs an in home doggie daycare and boarding facility for other lucky owned animals as well called Furever Furry. They are almost always fuller than full but if you can get your pet in, they will take great care of them while you are away! Check them out on Facebook.

Thank you so much to Dr. Vaske for making today extra special at CAWL! We are super proud of our special volunteer!

Wil Wellisch is a native of Minnesota and moved to Denver over 40 years ago. He was a Professor at Metro State University and taught for decades before retiring to save dogs. For almost 20 years, Wil has fostered dogs with many of the big name organizations in Denver. He has worked with almost every rescue in the area. He also runs an email sharing chain of over 1000 rescuers to help promote dogs in the hardest areas and works to save the dogs that are least likely to get out of shelters. Thousands of hours have been spent pouring over the computer to do anything he can to help.

He has fostered 165 dogs over the years and is incredibly humble about this number. He has fostered dozens of dogs for CAWL including Sophie, our blind PitBull.

Wil has traveled extensively in South and Central America and has a passion for art and photography. He has quite the sense of humor and will happily tell you about each and every dog he has fostered in hilarious detail.

Wil lives with his two retrievers Butch and Bella, who are spoiled and loved beyond words. All of us at CAWL can’t thank Wil enough for all he has done!

UPDATE 12/9/2014 – Congratulations Lewis – you will now have your leg for Christmas! We did it! Our Dr. Em is setting up Lewis’ first appointment for his initial prosthetic leg THANKS TO OUR AMAZING DONORS!! He will wear this temporary leg for 4-6 months while he gets used to it and so that OrthoPets can determine what changes may need to made to his permanent prosthetic. Part 1 funded thanks to you wonderful people. I think I’m a bit weepy now. Yay Lewis and to everyone that helped. Dr. Em will follow up with pictures and videos of Lewis’ visit to OrthoPets and we will find out how much more is needed for his permanent leg. Amazing day!

Lewis came to Colorado Animal Welfare League by owner surrender. In the middle of this summer the CAWL SNOWmobile was in La Jara, CO working on a grant to spay and neuter the public owned dog population of the San Luis Valley. In the midst of morning check in we realized there was an extra kennel with no surgery consent form attached, rather a surrender form. A man had signed his name and noted he was surrendering the dog to CAWL and had left the premises.

His kennel was filled with about 60 pounds of shy and thin, black and tan fur. Coaxed out with just a few kind noises and gentle hands and we realized it was a near full grown handsome black and tan shepherd mix that was missing half of his right front limb. He loved people and attention but was quite shy to walk with you, stumbling and fumbling, not quite comfortable with his incomplete limb. For the remainder of that spay and neuter clinic he learned to walk on leash and to accept the love and attention we all gave him. We learned that he simply adores children and always has a smile on his face. We also came to recognize that his limb was missing at an anatomical place that made it very difficult for him to not use it, but using it was not effective. Lewis rode back to the Denver area with the spay neuter team and quickly landed a great foster family. Not long after we were lucky enough to get a consultation with OrthoPets. Lucky for Lewis OrthoPets is right here in Denver and is world renowned for their mission to ”improve their patient’s quality of life through innovative prosthetic and orthotic solutions”. An initial visit to OrthoPets helped us learn a lot about Lewis: he was likely born with a partial front right limb, this boy still had some growing to do and most exciting he is an excellent candidate for a prosthetic front right leg.

Help Lewis Get a Leg

Donate to Spay or Neuter a Dog or Cat in 2016

Save thousands of lives with each donation towards CAWL's spay/neuter clinics on our new SNOW (Spay/Neuter on Wheels) Mobile. These clinics take place in rural towns in Colorado where pet overpopulation is rampant due to lack of low cost spay/neuter services. Each spay/neuter surgery costs approximately $27 per animal. All donations will go directly to purchasing drugs and supplies for these surgeries.